


The Things You Cannot Tell

by Naomida



Series: The Amazing(ly shitty) Spiderman [11]
Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Fantastic Four, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Abduction, Alternate Universe - Twins, Double Agents, Gen, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-12 07:30:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10485549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naomida/pseuds/Naomida
Summary: It turns out that Peter being disappointed in her is not the worst thing that could happen to Hilly.





	

Hilly needed civilian clothes, Wade and to get as far from the Avengers Tower as possible in thirty three seconds – because it was the time it had taken her to fall down the building, and Peter was possibly quicker than her.

Fortunately for her, running through Manhattan dressed as Spiderman meant that people actually moved away from her path, because they knew not to take chances, but that also meant that she couldn't disappear into the crowd, and she could already see Spiderman's shadows on the pavement, following her closely.

Thankfully, SHIELD had her back for once because just as she turned an angle to the rendez-vous point, a black SUV driving way too fast almost hit her, violently veered to the right on the sidewalk and drove right into a full Sephora.

People screamed, the real Spiderman landed right next to the SUV and ran into the shop to help people, and Hilly ducked into the back of the other SUV waiting for her and parked just a meter away.

Charlize, who was sitting behind the steering wheel, didn't even spare her a glance as she immediately started driving, taking advantage of the fact that all the other cars on the street had stopped and parked to look at the accident.

“Need help with the arm?” she asked two blocks later when Hilly, who had been trying to put on the civilian clothes waiting for her on the backseat, had finally abandoned the idea of taking the upper half of the Spiderman costume off and had just slipped her t-shirt and jacket over it.

“I need someone to put it back in its socket before I jump off.”

Charlize nodded, waited until they were stopping at a red light, and turned around to face her, frowning slightly.

“It's gonna hurt,” she warned.

Hilly nodded, clenched her teeth and closed her eyes as Charlize gently grabbed her wrist and shoulder and, without warning and with a wet, popping, nauseating noise, set her arm right again. Hilly groaned, loudly, and kept her eyes close even as Charlize turned back to the front of the car and the SUV started rolling again, not sure she could keep her tears from rolling down her cheeks if she opened them yet.

“ETA two minutes,” muttered Charlize after a beat of silence, “are you gonna be okay?”

“I don't have a choice,” replied Hilly, trying to roll her shoulder and deciding that it'd have to do when she didn't immediately want to scream after moving her arm.

As promised, two minutes later the car was stopping in front of a florist and Hilly quickly jumped out and joined the subway station on the other side of the street, walking as quickly as she could without looking too shifty.

Derek was already waiting on the platform when she arrived, but she still waited until entering the subway and sitting down next to him to discreetly take her earpiece off and give it to him.

“How much could you take?” he asked.

“Eighty percents.”

“Good,” he replied, nodding slightly and looking closely at her face, as if he was checking for something.

That had her hesitate for a second before she was asking the question burning her lips since she had seen what she had been sent to steal, deciding that she was already screwed anyway.

“Do you know what it is?”

“No. Did you see?”

She nodded and he frowned.

“How bad is it?” he asked.

“ _Very_ , very bad.”

“We go according to the plan then.”

She nodded, just once, before Derek was gently squeezing her wrist and getting up, ready to leave the subway at the next station.

 

 

***

 

 

Hilly took a detour, just to be sure and because she was feeling a little paranoid, before finally reaching her destination and crawling inside her old bedroom through the window – _just like old times_ , she thought bitterly.

She checked to see if her aunt was here – she wasn’t – and didn’t lose more time before getting her laptop out of the hiding place Wade had placed it just a few hours before and getting to work. It took her almost two hours to get everything out of the SHIELD issued USB drive and into an easier to hide format, and she almost broke her laptop once or twice in sheer frustration at the time it was taking, but by the time she was done, she felt a little lighter knowing that it would be a lot harder to find it now.

She destroyed the USB drive by smashing it to pieces, and left her bedroom without a single backward glance to go hide the rest of the evidence, feeling for the first time ever like maybe this mission wasn’t going to completely tank.

 

 

***

 

 

She had spoken too quickly – _because of course she had! –_ but really, _for once_ , it wasn’t her fault at all.

She had thought that SHIELD and her were a team. That SHIELD had her back while she did their dirty business – or destroyed all evidence of it, in this case. She had been made to believe that nothing would ever put her or her family in any danger while she was working for them and, well…

“–we are to understand that the suspect, a young girl named Melody Parker might also be an accomplice to the murder of Director of SHIELD Nick Fury,” said the CNN host as a blurry but definitely recognizable photograph of _Hillary_ Parker’s face was being shown for the _entire world_ to see.

Hilly hunched her shoulders, lowered the hoodie even more over her face and gave a circling look around.

The other people in the subway were, mostly, doing the same thing as her. The advantage was that they were all too busy looking at their smartphones and listening to Tony Stark assuring everyone that everything was fine to realize that the suspect – and actual culprit – of the crime was sitting right next to them. The problem was that everyone had seen her face on the news and each second spent there made her chances of getting out and getting on with the plan slimmer.

She looked back down at her phone when a video of Spiderman saving her life and her mad sprint following her fall was shown for the fourth time in ten minutes, and decided that once everything was over she would tell her brother _everything_. To hell with the fear that he wouldn’t accept what she had become. He already couldn’t accept what she had been back when they were still on good terms, and she was pretty sure telling him the truth would at least make her feel a little lighter.

And maybe earn a hug from Peter, who knew. She could always dream.

She just really, totally and stupidly missed him, and seeing him face-to-mask was making it harder to ignore than ever.

The only real hope she had of salvaging her relationship with him was Johnny Storm, and if she wanted to have a least a silver chance of getting to the next part of her plan and to Johnny, she needed to find a way off the subway without anyone noticing who she really was.

She decided to not be subtle at all and just ran out of the subway when it arrived at her stop, leaving her phone on the seat, and thankfully no one seemed to find it weird and people let her go without stopping her and accusing her of being a thief.

She only stopped running once she had reached the right building and started going up the familiar stairs.

 

 

***

 

 

Wade’s apartment hadn’t changed since Hilly had lived there. The decoration still sucked and there was still traces of blood in the cracked tiles of the kitchen from when he had bled out, but she still felt as comfortable and safe there as she had when Wade had taken her in.

There was a burner phone waiting for her on the couch, and she let herself heavily fall on the flat pillows while she dialed Wade’s number and waited for him to pick up.

“ _How_ is this kind of shit _always_ happening to you?” he asked before she had time to speak first.

Hilly closed her eyes and felt her shoulders relax a little just from hearing his voice, and she let herself smile.

“I wish I knew, but look at the bright side, I didn’t get hurt.”

“I’d bet my favorite gun that someone tried to shoot you.”

“Yes, but I dodged!”

“Was it Black Widow?” he asked, sounding like he was biting down on a laugh.

“Iron Man, thank god, because I’m pretty sure they don’t have the same aim.”

Wade laughed, and Hilly suddenly felt immensely better. Part of her wished he could be here with her, but what he was doing was way more important than providing moral support, and she already owed him too much.

“By the way, since you’ve probably been thinking about it non-stop, we just arrived at the safe house and your aunt is strangely not weirded out by me _at all_. Which is _weird_.”

Hilly rolled her eyes.

“I told you she wouldn’t care, especially since she’s been dying to meet you.”

“Yeah about that… you know she thinks I’m your boyfriend, right?”

“Yes, why?”

“Well...” he cleared his throat, “are you alright with it?”

“Of course, why wouldn’t I...” she trailed off, finally understanding where this was going. “Oh my _god_ Wade, of course we’re together and I know it, you’ve been _living_ with me ever since we came back from Lagos! Sleeping in the _same_ bed. _Having sex_. I don’t do that with people I’m just friends with.”

“I know!” he immediately said, “I just… I just wanted to make sure that you know that this is what you’re settling for.”

She rolled her eyes so hard, she almost saw the content of her skull.

“I’m not settling for anything, shut your mouth. You’re a strong, smart and sexy guy who’s had my back since day one, and you go down on me whenever I ask.”

Wade snorted.

“I also look damn good in lingerie,” he added.

“Damn right!” she said, grinning. “Now stop questioning us when we’re been OTP material all along, and don’t let my aunt go anywhere near a television.”

“Yeah, about that...”

Hilly’s heart sank to the bottom of her stomach.

“She saw that?”

“No, but I did, and that’s a real asshole move they pulled on you. Did they tell you they would do that?”

“No, they didn’t.”

Wade sighed heavily.

“This changes things.”

“No it doesn’t,” immediately replied Hilly, “Derek is gonna help me, the plan is still the same.”

“How do you know you can trust him? Or any of them?”

“Because I just do. Derek has taught me everything that I know, he wouldn’t do me like that.”

He sighed again.

“I want you back one day earlier, then.”

“I’m not sure I can do that,” she replied, worrying her lower lip between her teeth while her stomach started swimming.

Wade being nervous made _her_ nervous, and she wasn’t sure she could afford that.

“Fine,” he said, not sounding fine _at all_ , “but if you are even twenty minutes late, I’m going with plan B.”

“Alright, but I’m telling you, you don’t have to worry.”

 

 

***

 

 

Hilly spent the night at Wade’s apartment – or former apartment, she guessed – waiting for the right moment to put the second part of the plan into action. For hours, while she waited for the sun to set and rise again, she watched the news, listening to everything that was being said about her and the Avengers.

They were looking through the city for her, and people apparently kept on thinking that they had seen her some place or other, and it was clear, judging by the blurry footage of the Avengers taken by civilians, that the superheroes were growing frustrated.

She wondered for a moment if they knew what it was that she had stolen, if Stark had told them. She also tried to not think about what her brother must have been thinking of her, but it was hard when Spiderman swung two blocks away from the apartment, his red and blue figure recognizable despite the distance.

By the time she woke up from a too short night, she still had no idea how she could explain to him that this was her job and wasn’t personal at all, because she knew that he wouldn’t believe her, and she didn’t have more time to think it over, needing to leave the apartment and move on with the plan as quickly as possible.

She changed into her usual black catsuit, put on jeans and a bomber jacket over it, tied her hair into a high ponytail, and off she was, back in the subway in the direction of Manhattan.

She got off the subway two stops before her destination and walked the rest of the way, making sure to keep her breathing long and steady, and tried to ignore the way her heart was trying to beat right out of her chest. It didn’t really work, especially once she arrived in front of the Baxter Building.

Palms sweating, Hilly took a long breath in, slowly let it out, put a fake smile on her face and walked in.

She walked as serenely as she could to the elevator, pressed the button to call it and waited, staring at the reflective doors like she was checking her reflection.

The man at the reception, whom she was actually staring at, knew her face and had probably seen it on the news too, but he didn’t seem to have noticed her yet and was busy speaking to a mailman.

 _Good_ , she thought, giving a tiny polite smile at the woman who stepped next to her to wait for the elevator too.

The elevator arrived an entire minute later and emptied out before Hilly and the woman walked in. The stranger pressed the button for the 27th floor. Hilly chose the 10th. She could have gone higher, it would have spared her a lot of time, but she didn’t want to take any chances. Someone might recognize her and call the police or the Avengers and there was no way she would be arrested so close to her goal.

The hallway she got off the elevator to was empty and she confidently strode to the apartment situated to the left corner of the building. It was empty, had been since the man living there had died in strange circumstances, and absolutely no one had ever walked in in the three months she had kept a close eye on it.

Inside, she made sure the close the door behind her, shed her civilian clothes, leaving nothing but her catsuit on, and opened the air-vent, slowly slipping in. It was going to be a long, _long_ way up, but she was confident she could make, and anyway, who would check the Baxter Building’s air-vent for her?

That’s what she kept telling herself the whole time it took her to reach the penthouse.

No one was inside it, she knew because the Fantastic Four were assisting the Avengers with looking for her. Still, knowing the security cameras were still on, she made sure to stay in their dead angles and do her business as quickly as possible.

She joined Johnny’s bedroom and made for his walk in closet without waiting, finding her backpack thrown at the very back of it like she had assumed. She made sure everything was still as she had put it in – and was glad to find that Johnny hadn’t touched her stuff – took the one web-shooter left from her superhero career out, and replaced it with the USB key she had stolen in Lagos. The one encrypted by very unique and unhackable Wakadian coding – the one she had put a little more than half of what she had stolen from Tony Stark in.

Once it was done and she had put the bag back where it was, she started walking to the library to take the other USB key Wade and her had hidden. It was encrypted too and had a tiny virus in it, something just harmful enough to trigger a reaction when she plugged it into a computer, but contained absolutely nothing, and she was counting on it to do its job.

It was still in the flower pot, and once Hilly had it in hand, she forgot entirely about keeping herself hidden from the cameras. She marched right out of the library and into Reed Richards’ lab – and really, the Four were so unprepared for her doing that, they hadn’t even made an effort to hide how to get in every time she had been over and pretending to train with Johnny.

Once in the lab, she took half a second to just stare with fascination at all the incredible machines just lying around, before joining the computer that looked like the most important one – it was still on, she _couldn’t_ believe Mister Fantastic – and plugging her USB drive in.

At first, nothing happened and she almost cursed out loud, but then, almost took quickly for her to see, the door to the lab closed abruptly. No alarm came on but she didn’t doubt the Four knew.

Now she just had to wait for the perfect moment to get arrested.

They must have not been that far, because only a minute later a loud boom resonated in the entire penthouse about at the exact same moment as Johnny flew right past the floor to ceiling window in front of her.

Sighing, because no matter the fact that everything was planned, she still felt incredibly nervous, she grabbed the chair that had been in front of the computer and got ready to do the exact same thing she had done at the Avengers Tower.

The glass resisted a lot more but she managed to break it just as she was hearing voices on the other side of the door and jumped without waiting.

She didn’t close her eyes, looking out for superheroes ready to jump on her, but she couldn’t help a small smile. It reminded her a lot of that one time she had stolen something from them. She had been looking for information about The Green Goblin at the time and working for herself, pretending to be her brother, but still. It was a little hard to think that she had gotten from this to who she was now, but it wasn’t the time to think back on everything, and she threw web and broke her fall about twenty seconds before her imminent death.

She landed hard, looked up to see Johnny Storm flying in her direction, and started running – only to be stopped after two steps by an invisible wall.

She fell back on her ass, hissing in pain, and looked up to see Sue glaring down at her with her arms crossed.

“Stay down,” said Sue between clenched teeth. She looked disappointed but Hilly couldn’t feel guilty about it, she _couldn’t_. “SHIELD should be here soon to arrest you.”

Pursing her lips, Hilly managed to get up on her knees before Johnny gently landed behind her.

“Did you get the handcuffs?” asked his sister.

He was behind Hilly so she couldn’t see him but she guessed he nodded, because not a second later he was gently grabbing her wrist and wrapping something extremely heavy around them that didn’t bulge at all when she flexed her arms and tried to break it.

“Did Reed make these?” she asked, turning to look at Johnny over her shoulder.

He was scowling deeply and didn’t answer, looking up at the sky instead. When Hilly followed his gaze she realized that several helicopters were flying overhead, probably already filming the whole thing and broadcasting it live. It was embarrassing but Hilly had worst problems at the moment, especially when she caught sight of Spiderman, sticking to the side of the Baxter Building only ten floors or so above the ground.

She looked away from her brother and didn’t protest when Johnny pushed her up on her feet, stumbling because of her weighted arms. It was going to be hard to get out of those if SHIELD tried to double-cross her but she knew that nothing would happen while the superheroes were looking at her – and judging from how betrayed Johnny looked when she sent him a second glance, she had strong reasons to believe that they would paying attention to her for a little while.

It meant that she was safe, to some extend.

Still, she only started to feel better when SHIELD arrived and Derek was the first agent to join them and get a hold of her arm, pushing her in the direction of the black quinjet he had just gotten off of.

“Don’t worry,” he was saying to Sue, “we’ll put her in detention for interrogating, and you’ll be authorized to witness it, of course.”

Hilly was pushed into the quinjet before she could hear more, an armed SHIELD agent sitting on either side of her, and within minutes she was getting flown out away from Manhattan and in the direction of the Hellicarrier.

Still, Derek waited until they were well above the ocean before smiling at her.

“You were perfect today, Agent Parker.”

She didn’t really believe that but still nodded her thanks.

 

 

***

 

 

Derek hadn’t lied about the interrogation, unfortunately. Hilly had been sitting on an uncomfortable chair for at least an hour now, staring at her reflection in the mirror right in front of her without really seeing it. It was most definitely a one-way mirror and the cliché of the thing almost made her laugh, except that her brother was probably on the other side. Or maybe one of the Fantastic Four or Avengers. It didn’t really matter anyway.

Shame was starting to eat at her.

She had never wanted to be a superhero, but she had always done was what needed from her. It had started with walking into a room full of radioactive spiders on purpose because there was a small chance that she’d get powers like Peter and be able to save Gwen while he was on his way. Then, she had taken up the Spiderman mantle for a while, because New York needed its friendly superhero and Peter couldn’t do it. She hadn’t really seen Peter forcefully taking it back coming, but now that enough time had passed that she had been able to think on it, she realized that she should have seen it coming and should have prepared for it – and that was the problem. She had been taken by surprise and totally thrown off by the fact that Peter, after forcing her into this life, had thrown her out of it without a care. She had found herself lost and helpless. This superhero business had consumed her life, so much so that after losing Spiderman, she hadn’t had anything left, except for Wade’s friendship, and even that, despite the mercenary’s generosity and patience with her, hadn’t been able to save her from becoming a disgusting thief.

Because that was what she was, right? A pathetic thief working for the big guys, who were probably _not_ going to help her once they realized that she had played them.

Peter was never going to forgive her, she knew. He was always trying his best to be just, to do good, to save everyone. She didn’t think he’d understand. She didn’t really understand either, sometimes.

She wasn’t sure she deserved him to understand. Not having him in her life was probably the best thing – it hadn’t work so bad up until now and she was pretty sure he would still manage to get by if SHIELD really decided to screw her and put her in prison. Sure, he’d be brokenhearted, but he’d still live his life.

He hadn’t seem to mind their utter lack of communication from the past year and almost a half. He’d be fine.

Yeah, she didn’t have to worry about him, she just needed to make sure Derek had her back, get out of here, maybe leave the country for a while.

She was broken out of her thoughts by the door being thrown open, Charlize entering the room with a gun at her hand and blood all over her uniform.

“What the hell?” asked Hilly, immediately starting to panic as she watched Charlize close the door behind her.

“I’m pretty sure you’re not one of them and you need to get out _right now_. It’s not safe anymore.”

“What?”

Charlize knelt behind her instead of replying, fiddling with the handcuffs for a while before sighing deeply, getting up and coming to stand in front of Hilly.

“I can’t get them off, I’m sorry, do you think you can try to break them?”

“I don’t know,” replied Hilly, flexing her arms to test them, “what the hell is going on?”

“SHIELD’s gone rogue,” replied Charlize, frowning and pressing a finger against her comm for a second before immediately grabbing Hilly by the arm and pulling her to her feet, “we need to go, _now_.”

“What do you mean rogue?!”

Charlize didn’t respond at first, pulling Hilly after her as she threw the door open, looked on either side of the hallway behind it several times to make sure no one was there before starting to walk quickly, still holding onto Hilly’s arm.

“I mean,” she murmured once they rounded two corners and entered a small armory that seemed to have been looted already, “that Captain America literally just stopped a worldwide attack from SHIELD and it turns out that half of the people we were working with were– _are_ nazi terrorists.”

“I…” tried Hilly before Charlize forcefully turned her around and started doing something to her handcuffs again. “I don’t...”

She didn’t understand. It didn’t make any sense. Or actually, it made maybe a little too much sense, because what were the odds that Director Fury had been assassinated and she had been sent to steal from the Avengers the exact same week Captain America uncovered that kind of thing?

Hilly quickly tried to recall all of the things she had stolen from various people around the world for SHIELD, and what she could remember or knew the use for made her pale. If half of SHIELD were nazi terrorists – and _really_? _Nazis_?! – then they had a _huge_ problem on their hands.

“Okay don’t freak out,” muttered Charlize right before starting to shoot at Hilly, making her jump in surprise and almost cling to the ceiling with her foot.

She didn’t have the chance though, because after only two bullets aimed right at the handcuffs, her two hands finally fell away from each other, although the heavy metal circling around her wrists was still there. Still, it was better than nothing and she immediately brought her hands to the front of her body and rolled her shoulders that hurt for having her hands behind her back for so long.

“Okay,” sighed Charlize, taking two guns from the rack in front of her and handing them to Hilly before grabbing another one and putting it into her empty shoulder hostler, “I need to make sure some things don’t fall into the wrong hands before I get out of here, but you definitely shouldn’t stay too long. There are still some quinjets available on ground five, you just need to fly South West to go back to New York, you should be able to find some help there.”

“What help?” Hilly couldn’t help but ask, shoving both guns into her thigh holsters before grabbing another one and several chargers. “If half of SHIELD is bad what do I do? And how do I even know who’s good and who’s on the dark side?”

“If they shoot at you or try to kidnap you, they’re definitely dark side, which is why I don’t want you to linger around here. They’ve already gotten their hands on two superpowered agents, I don’t want you to be the third one.”

Hilly frowned, but she followed Charlize out of the armory and into the hallway.

She hadn’t known about other agents who had powers, but then again, she hadn’t known about a lot of things. SHIELD liked to be very secretive and purposely didn’t share any information at all, although it could sometimes make their agents’ lives so much easier and, well, she couldn’t say she was very surprise at the fact that no one had known about a secret group of people going rogue.

At least she knew for a fact that Charlize couldn’t have been a part of this group and, judging from the blood on her, she hadn’t even have to think before choosing a side.

Still, that didn’t mean that when they rounded a corner and came face to face with a group of five agents that immediately started shooting at them Hilly wasn’t surprised. She shot back, of course, and managed to take two out while Charlize took care of the three others, but her brain refused to believe what was happening.

“Oh fuck,” she muttered, once the five agents were dead and Charlize and her were moving again, “Is it really happening?”

Charlize sent her a sad and hopeless look.

“I’m afraid so,” she replied before they heard shooting again and immediately ran to the source of the noise.

 

 

***

 

 

An hour later and Hilly wasn’t getting any closer to a quinjet. Her arm was bleeding from where a man she had thought dead had suddenly surged up and gotten her with a knife and her shoulders were hurting from the heavy broken handcuffs that were still around her wrists, but at least she was alive.

Charlize had run off with another woman about half an hour before, saying something about hard drives and some sort of database, and Hilly hadn’t seen a lot of people since then.

Or rather, she hadn’t seen a lot of people who were still breathing.

She walked into another room, prudent, crouching and staying low, and couldn’t help but grimace and feel her eyes fill with tears of utter horror as she had to navigate through a room full of dead bodies. There were at least fifty agents, all dead and on the ground, and it seemed like the entire Hellicarrier was in the same state. There wasn’t a sound or a movement disturbing the strange atmosphere.

Just fifteen minutes before she had been able to hear screams and shooting coming from far away, and while that had been disturbing and made her almost hyperventilate at the idea of what was happening for people to be screaming that way, this horrible silence seemed worse.

She made her way through the room to the elevator and managed to force its doors open, checking to see where it was – it seemed to be blocked between two floors somewhere high above her head, and although she knew that it was probably not going to move any time soon, she still felt a little nervous when she started to make her way down the shaft, mentally thanking her superpowers the whole time.

Once she finally arrived on the fifth floor, she finally understood why the others were so silent.

She barely had time to shoot the man waiting in front of the elevator’s closed doors before two others were coming at her with stun batons. She took the first one out with a well aimed kick in the face but didn’t quite manage to move her arm quickly enough to dodge a blow from the second one, the electric shock bringing her to her knees with a loud groan. She used this to her advantage though, grabbing the man by the calf and bringing him down with her before shooting him twice, once in the shoulder and once in the chest.

She wished she had time to get her breath back but could already hear people running in her direction so, without even glancing at the pile of dead bodies the three men had been guarding, she started running in the opposite direction, trying to remember which way the quinjets were.

Unfortunately, everyone knew that the only way out of this Hellicarrier was via quinjet, and after only ten steps Hilly came face to face with another small group of agents who immediately started shooting at her, and once she was done taking care of them and took another ten steps, she was met with new agents gone rogue.

She fought so many off, she lost count and ended up without any bullets left out of her three guns but managed to steal one from the last guy she had killed and just had time to get up and turn around to point it at the person who had tried to sneak up on her.

“Derek,” she said when she met his eyes.

He was holding a gun to her head too and there was blood running down the side of his face but other than that, he looked like his usual self.

“Parker,” he replied, “I see you managed to get out of the interrogation room.”

“Yeah, although I had some help, I have to admit.”

“I know,” he said, eyes quickly running over the room around them before his face relaxed a little and he very slowly lowered his gun. “I also know there’s no way you’re Hydra, so let’s stop with this and get straight to business.”

Hilly’s fingers tightened around the cross of her gun and she gritted her teeth.

“How do _I_ know you’re not one of them?”

Usually, Derek would have rolled his eyes and continued right where he had left off, but this time was different. This time, they were surrounded by bodies, of both good and bad people. This time, it was life and death.

“Our plan is still on,” he said, “and I know that you trust me, because you know I’m no traitor and terrorist.”

Hilly swallowed down the bile constantly rising in her throat, took a second to think about it, and finally lowered her gun too.

“Alright. What do we do, then?”

“Charlize is taking care of a few things and setting up some traps for the guys staying behind but as you might have seen, most of them are leaving.”

“Yeah, which is pretty bad since I’m trying to do the same too.”

“I know,” replied Derek, speaking carefully – which Hilly took as a very bad sign, “and unfortunately there’s no way we’re getting anywhere close to a quinjet.”

“So what do we do? We can’t just swim our way back.”

“No,” he said, still careful, looking her closely, “but we can play them.”

For a second, she didn’t understand what he was talking about, but then, when his eyes became more insistent it became clear.

“They’re going to kill us both,” she declared, taking half a step back.

“No. They’re going to think I’m with them, and they’re probably going to torture you, I can’t lie about that, but that’s the only chance we have.”

“I’m _not_ turning myself in!” she replied, pulse accelerating just at the thought.

Derek seemed to sense her rising panic because he gently grabbed her wrist and pulled her a little bit closer, peering into her eyes.

“Parker, we don’t have a choice. Either I capture you and bring you to them or we try to fight our way out and, trust me, we’re not going to make it.”

“You can’t ask me to do that.” She shook her head, shook herself out of his grip and took two huge steps back, hands starting to shake. “You can’t, Derek, I’m sorry but– It’s too much, I can’t, they’ll…”

“They won’t kill you, I promise,” he immediately replied, taking a step up. “They probably want what you got from Stark, so they won’t kill you, not yet, and that gives us _time_. Time to get you out of their clutch.”

“I can’t.”

“I’m not sure we have a choice,” he replied over the sound of heavy footsteps fast approaching.

Heart in her throat and eyes starting to get really misty, Hilly used the moment she had before new enemies arrived to consider it – although she already knew that what Derek was saying was true.

She hadn’t seen signs of real SHIELD agents ever since Charlize had left and she knew she was an asset. Bad guys wouldn’t kill a girl who had the same powers as Spiderman, that would be stupid, especially if that girl had also just stolen Tony Stark’s secrets and was the only one to know where they were. They’d keep her, torture her and probably try to brainwash her once they were finished and truthfully, Hilly knew that she couldn’t take it.

She wasn’t made for this kind of life and it would utterly destroy her, she knew it down to her very core, but it was her only chance at maybe surviving.

The only question, really, was whether surviving in these conditions was worth it.

The footsteps grew closer, Derek’s face turned hard and he raised his gun back to her head, and Hilly’s mind turned to Wade and Aunt May, both very far away from New York in a safe house right this instant, and her brother, who was probably still reeling from the events of the past few days and had to take care of this SHIELD issue on top of everything, and she made up her mind before even realizing it.

Her aunt and brother wouldn’t be able to take another death in the family. Uncle Ben had almost destroyed them already, she couldn’t do it do them a second time, so, her body acting on pure instinct, Hilly threw her gun away and, just as six agents dressed in all black and holding very big guns entered the room, she threw herself at Derek and started punching him in a faked attempt at trying to bash his head in.

Someone shot her in the shoulder from behind but she just gritted her teeth and continued to hit him, kicking back when several pairs of hands took hold of her arms and tried to push her away. She managed to bite at one of the hands when the men got her off of a bleeding but definitely still conscious Derek and when one of them tried to strike her she bit again, this time using all the force she had in her jaw to almost tear his hand off his body and make him shout in pain.

“Motherfucker!” yelled someone right before the first stun baton hit her across the back.

Groaning loudly, Hilly fell to her knees and managed to have all of them let go of her arms in one movement when she violently shook them off. Unfortunately, the movement was immediately followed by another strike of stun baton, this time at the back of her head, almost making her pass out at the sheer intensity of pain that flared in her skull, but she held on and punched one of the man in the thigh with all the strength she could muster, breaking his femur.

“Ow!” he yelled as he collapsed at the exact same time as another voice shouted a “Don’t shoot to kill!”.

 _Too late_ , Hilly thought, the by-now familiar feeling of a bullet going right through her other shoulder stealing her breath. She looked down in shock at the red hole right under her collarbone, a sob escaping her, before it was drowned out by the sound of another bullet being fired, this time at her left thigh.

She fell down, half on top of Derek, and thought that at the rate this was going, she’d be dead with the next one, but someone shouted again, the words sounding like gibberish through the cotton in her ears.

For a few seconds, nothing else happened.

Then she was grabbed by the arms and forced to her feet and she didn’t even try to hold back as her head spun violently at the movement and the pain flaring through her body and she doubled-over and threw up, feeling delirious and light-headed as someone hit her with a baton – without the electricity this time – in the small of her back and she was forced to walk.

Everything was blurry and there were black dots dancing all over her vision but she recognized the giant garage when they entered it. She couldn’t tell much about her surrounding except for the fact that there were _a lot_ of people there and when they forced her to her knees in the middle of the room and a gun was directly pointed to her head, Hilly looked up at the man holding it instead of closing her eyes.

The only sound she could register, strangely, was her shuddering breaths as she watched the man slowly put his index finger on the trigger.

She had always thought that she'd die masked, during a job or another alien invasion that would have forced her back in New York's streets, not on her knees in a black catsuit, bleeding everywhere and with the handcuffs Johnny Storm had put around her wrist still weighting her arms down.

She wondered, for a second, if anyone would know that she was dead. If those men would leave the bodies, or burn the entire carrier down on their way out. She didn't want her family, and Wade, _god_ he was probably still waiting for her, to still have hope of finding her years after her death.

Mostly, she wanted the guy to get it over with quickly, because Hilly was pretty sure she was going to pass out anytime now.

“I'm not going to kill you,” said the guy, probably reading on her face that it was what she was waiting for. He smirked, shrugged a shoulder, and slowly lowered the gun, “you're too valuable. We need the USB drive, and once you've finally told us where it is, we're probably going to brainwash you into becoming our very own Spiderwoman, so don't get your hopes up. We're not killing you.”

“You should,” she replied.

The man's smirk grew larger.

She spit at him. It was mostly blood, but it was the thought that count, and she knew she had done something good because not even a second later the cross of his gun was harshly pushed into the side of her face, making her fall sideways and black out for two heartbeats.

By the time she could see again, a very bloody Derek and some other guy were trailing behind the one who had spoken while the rest were forcing Hilly to get back up and follow them to one of the two last quinjets still here.

She was pushed inside one without a care and left to bleed out on the floor while everyone took a seat and buckled up.

She watched, vision swimming, as the door closed behind the last agent and felt more than she heard the quinjet come to life and start to lift off the ground.

Derek wasn’t looking at her but he looked well enough for someone that she had tried to beat up and she wondered for a second if he really had a plan to get her out of here or if it had just been a very clever way to get her into the bad guys’ hands.

 _It doesn’t matter_ , she thought, closing her eyes, _I’ll bleed out before we land._

 _It’ll be fine_.


End file.
